Thursday, November 22, 2012

Egypt considers splitting premier league to reduce fan attendance

Egyptian
soccer appears posed for renewed conflict with the Egyptian Football
Association (EFA) and the government floating a proposal to split the premier
league into two groups in a bid to reduce fan attendance and weaken militant,
highly politicized, street battle-hardened support groups.

The
EFA said the proposal was part of discussions with the ministers of sports and
interior El-Amry Farouk and Ahmed Gamaleddin aimed at agreeing on a resumption
next month of professional soccer that has been suspended since 74 fans were
killed in February in a politically loaded brawl in the Suez Canal city of Port
Said.

The
EFA said in a statement published on its website that it would meet with the
ministers again in the next ten days to set a date for the resumption. Militant
supporters of crowned Cairo club Al Ahly SC have vowed to prevent the return of
domestic matches as long as justice has not been served for the 74 dead.

The
dead were Al Ahly fans who died in the brawl that erupted at the end of a match
against Port Said’s Al Masry SC. The brawl that got out of hand is widely
believed to have been instigated in a bid to teach a lesson to the militants
who played a key role in last year’s mass protests that toppled Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak as well as in subsequent protests against the military
and the security forces.

More
than seventy people, including nine mid-level security officials, are on trial for
their role in the brawl in a slow-moving legal process that has left fans and
the victims’ families frustrated. Militant soccer fans constitute one of Egypt’s
largest civic groups after the ruling Muslim Brotherhood.

Mr. Farouk said the league could be split into a group led
by Al Ahly and one led by its Cairo arch rival Al Zamalek SC."We are discussing
how to reduce the number of teams in the 2012-2013 season to minimize fan
attendance," Mr. Farouk told reporters.

Zamalek’s
administrative manager Hamada Anwar warned that the suspension of soccer was “a
disaster” that had hit the clubs financially. He said a resumption of the
league was needed to avert a financial crisis. “Besides the clubs, the national
team will be badly affected by the championship stoppage. It’s important for
all parties and we must work hand in hand to reschedule the league during the short
time remaining,” Mr. Anwar was quoted as saying on Zamalek’s website.

Players
have organized in recent weeks to demand a resumption of soccer because it
threatened their pay and performance. The move has exasperated relations
between fans and players that were already strained because a majority of
players remained on the side lines of the uprising against Mr. Mubarak or in
some cases went as far as supporting the former autocratic leader.

The
effort to get the league restarted despite supporter objections comes as
militant soccer fans have booked a number of successes in achieving their
demands, which include reform of the police and security forces, depriving the
police of responsibility for stadium security, a clean-up of corruption in
Egyptian soccer and the removal of EFA and club officials associated with the
former Mubarak regime. The militants have in recent weeks repeatedly attacked
theoffices of the EFA,
Al Ahly’s training ground and the premises of media organizations.

Besides thwarting
efforts this fall to lift the ban on domestic soccer, the fans have also forced
a string of Mubarak era officials to resign or withdraw their candidacies for
office. The Illegal Gains Authority moreover has banned the chairman of Al
Ahly, Hassan Hamdi, from travel and frozen his assets on suspicion of
corruption.

Al Ahly fans are likely to further take some satisfaction from a decision
this week by the Switzerland-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to put
on hold an earlier ruling that overturned an EFA banning of Al Masri for two
seasons and its demotion to the second league because of the February brawl,
the worst incident in Egyptian sporting history. The court’s freezing was in
response to an EFA appeal against its earlier decision.

The EFA appeal followed severe criticism by fans who charged that CAS had
overturned the sanctions because the EFA had failed to attend a key hearing in
the case. Al Ahly fans will monitor the EFA’s next steps closely, which could
influence their attitude toward the resumption of the soccer league.

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About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile